AlionLive Madeira Part 10 is online!

Done! This was really a lot of material I had to edit. The source material was about 1 hour and 20 minutes and has been edited down to about 50 minutes. This part is a bout a visit to the botanical garden of Funchal and those who know me, know what it means if an alionsonny armed with a video camera ends up at a place full of interesting plants and beautiful flowers. There's much to see, especiall flowers and plants and... flowers. I decided to divide this day of the trip into two separate videos. So, note: There will be again part 10-A and 10-B. Why that? Well, after walking thru the botanical garden, we didn't feel like walking back all the way to Funchal center on our feet and took a bus. Riding a bus at Madeira is a very special adventure, so I didn't want that busride to be overlooked in all those plants and flowers. And so to make sure, you do not miss that furious busride, I decided to put it in a separate. This video will soon be uploaded. But now have much fun with the impressions from the Jardim Botanico in Funchal! Edit: Youtube seems to have some troubles today and shows an Content Encoding Error instead of the embedded video. If so, just visit this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeJslqe9elU 

Pharao Dub (2012 Version) has just been released!

If you have not yet read the previous posting, you should do it now, because it is essential to understand the following.

The second song of my 3 problem albums has undergone a total overhaul. It is the song "Pharao Dub". I didn't have much to work at it, as the mix was quite fine allready. But still there was some stuff to tweak and improve. I think the whole thing sounds more powerfull and clear now. I didn't change the song structure much, because everything was fine as it was. 

I am closing this post with a few words I simply have to say, regarding this remix thing alltogether and the restructuring of my albums: I knew that there would be some of you who do not like the new versions very much. That's a natural thing. Not just a few amongst you out there love the rough and unpolished alionsonny sound of the old days and are quite uncomfortable with the new, more structured works of mine. Contrary I shiver when I look at the raw old project data I didn't touch for ages. Indeed I wonder why so many of you like that noise ;) But I am happy about it! But you have to undestand, that I have my own artistical standards and those standards grow day by day. I simply cannot do a bass of death with screaming loud resonance sauce and dull wobbeling music all the time. 

Ok, enough words. Here is Parao Dub, the 2012 Version!

Walking Dub 2012 Mix has been released!

Does Sonny start to remix his own stuff now? Partly right! You are right, that this is a new version of a very old track by me. To be exactly, it is a new version of the secondtrack I published ever under the name alionsonny back then in 2004. Why a new version now? Is Sonny going to remix all his old stuff and no longer producing fresh works? No, no, no, don't panic! The whole thing has a simple and easy understandable reason.

Those of you who went to Amazon, iTunes etc. and searched for my music will have missed the 3 albums "Early Xperiments in Dub", "Excursions in Time & Space" und "This is not really Reggae". Here's why they are missing: I do not have all songs of those albums in a quality my distribution partner Routenoute accepts (above 192 kbps MP3). This has different reasons, for example a harddisk crash back then in 2007 or the fact that at the time I recorded the stuff I was too lazy to encode a proper version.

I do not still have all the raw material or at least a uncompressed WAV file. Ok, I could cheat and simply reencode the 128 kbps MP3s to a higher bitrate, but this would be a fraud and is not my style. Instead of that I will re-record all songs of which I still have the raw material and at the ocasion will give all those songs a complete overhaul. Well to do this is bitterly neccessary at some songs, because the original mix is, to put it nicely, complete crap. The result will be about 2 albums, which will be available at all bigger MP3 stores out there. Good news for all the freeriders: The songs of which I have no raw source material and no WAV file I will give away for free. At the moment this is fact for the old (and gruelsome mixed) classic "Herbman in Space" from the album "Early Xperiments in Dub". I still have the raw material of that song, but I personally find it too stupid to make a new version ;)

Ok, and now the new version of "Walking Dub". I have at least 26 songs to remix ;)

Creativity strikes hard!

Hi friends! This time there's just good news, because there's a real creative mood going on the kingdom of Alion. Everywhere something is going and not just a bit. If you watched my activities during the past days, you'll have noticed that the recent creative block has vanished and made way for a quite fruitful era.

Yesterday, the 10th track for the album "Sumeria" by my project "Cimelium" has been released and that means, that there are just 3 tracks missing, until I will release that album. And, what a  coincidence, I have about 6 song projects in different states of completion, which fit on the album beautifully. So it is more than just possible, that the album will be released prior to my birthday (July 19th). And once the concept album "Mesopotamia" is released, I have two more album ideas for "Cimelium". Yeah, the beat goes on and on...

A new sideproject, a new facette of my musical schizophrenia, is also in a state one can call it a concept. Because my musical origins are in the metal and punk genres of music, it was a wish from the heart all the time to do such music too again, besides all the other musical styles i cover. The concept for my new project is titled "Greifenberg" and under that name I will release Folkmetal, Viking Metal, Blackmetal etc. And because the whole concept is not just a bit about Dragons, Knights, Sword and Magic, this project is also a great new home for the successors of the "Alion - The Original Soundtrack" album.

You will be surprised at all, which new facettes of my creativity I will unveil to you soon. For example I will put more focus on guitar and vocals in the future. I expect that, aside from the alionsonny project (Reggae Dub), there will be 10 to 15 projects for particular musical styles in the end. Some of those projects are more or less alive allready:

• Cimelium - Electronic Ethno, Chillout, Meditation -> formerly AlionMeditations
• Willma Poppen - Techno Pop of the most commercial kind
• Tubenwurst - Electronic Rock, Wave, Avant Garde -> successor of the album "Electronic Spacerock"

Scheduled for the future are the following projects so far:
Greifenberg -> Folkmetal, Viking Metal, Blackmetal, orchestral stuff
WOLTHER -> Singer Songwriter and Progressive Rock

And what about AlionLive? AlionLive Madeira? YEAH! This will go on too! Currently I am cutting the longest part so far, which is about a day at the botanical gardes of Funchal. This part will consist of twoo separate parts. No this time not because of upload issues, but because when we were getting back from the botanical gardes, we took the bus and I was able to sit in the front of the bus and could film the whole busride from Funchal botanical gardens to Funchal center from nearly a drivers perspective. And because riding a bus at Madeira is allways an adventure, I make the busride a video part on it's own to not let it drown in all the flowers & stuff at the botanical gardens.

This will be part 10a and 10b of AlionLive Madeira then. And so you know what awaits you still, here's a little outlook on the comming parts of the series. These are the parts comming up next:
Part 11 - Hiking on our own to the wild heartland of Madeira
Part 12 - The day after hiking and the return.
Part 13 - Another day at the beach and more
Part 14 - Departure -> extremely short.

Maybe I will do a part 15 for an aftermath with tips & tricks, do's and dont's. This could be very useful for your own planning of a trip to Madeira. Please let me know if you would like me to do this.

Well and after this is done, other stuff from AlionLive is to be done. I have loads of ideas. Well, and that's the report so far from here. I'm at work for you again!

AlionLive Madeira - Teil/Part 9 - Let's got to the Beach!

Once again I did it and composed the ninth part of my travelogue about my trip to Madeira. This time we go to the beach for some swimming. Afterwards we visit a nice fish restaurant and to end the day, we visit a real cozy restaurant with livemusic to have some cocktails. This part is not very long, but part 120 will be much longer.

News from the Willma Poppen Project!

Yes, it was quiet for quite a time regarding that project. Well, in April we released a new song, but somehow it did'nt get further somehow. I think this is, because it is hard to keep a group of hardcore individualists at a project, who have all their own projects on their agenda which are complex enough to fill 3 human lives each. But there's real great news: The whole original Willma Poppen team, whose member names stay secret with the exception of mine, gathered to produce a new song. That song with the nice title "Mrs. Poppen's Funny Mushroom Omelette" is now available for your listening pleasure at the Willma Poppen Blog and the Willma Poppen Homepage. HAVE FUN!

alionsonny, now also on iTunes, Amazon and Spotify!

Some of you folks told me, that buying my music is too complicated. Directly from me this was the case at all, but also via the (awfull slow) Routenote Shop you told me it is too complicated. And escpecially Europeans told me that at RouteNote "I have to pay in Dollars". Well...

But now, there's no excuse for you all, because on iTunes, you can buy the albums "Alion - The Original Soundtrack", "XperiMental Reggae WorX" and "Electronic Spacerock "international in the currency of your country. The album "Reggae?" is not yet at iTunes. I have to ask why. Additionally you can get all four albums on Amazon and on Spotify. There's no music of mine available yet on eMusic, but maybe my distribution partner did not get this done up to now.

So, let's go! There is really no reason left, why it should be impossible or inconvinient to buy one or the other of my albums!

AlionLive Madeira - Part 8 - Santa Maria de Colombo is online!

Yeah, it is quite a time, since I uploaded part 7. Some personal problems simply kept me from doings stuff, but now I am back again with full force. Well, and then there was another thing which made me intentionally not upload that video earlier. Some time ago my internet provider offered me a VDSL 50 line for the same price as my old ADSL 3000 line. I instantly said yes, because, especially when uploading videos, connection speed matters. And how annoying it was to be forced to cut longer videos into portions of 15 minutes length, so I got part Xa to Xb. This was, because a 15 minutes video usually took 5 hours (!!!) to upload. Ok, recently I got it down to 3-4 hours with a more efficient compression, but that was still too much. With my new connection, I get a video, which formerly took 5 hours to upload, uploaded in 11 minutes (!!!). And this is why I got the new part, part 8, with it's 50 minutes playtime, uploaded in 33 Minutes. That's just great!

Ok, part 8 is about the trip on the replica of the ship Santa Maria on which Columbus sailed toAmerica and which I announce in the last 2 parts. The background music is from my orchestral soundtrack album "Alion - The Original Soundtrack", about which you can read in this older blog post. The album is, like 3 other albums of mine, available for sale on my Routenote shop and soon on iTunes, Amazon MP3, Rdio, Spotify and many other sites. And now, without futher words, 50 minutes of AlionLive Madeira in one piece. get something to drink and eat, because this will be a looong ride ;)